


Transported

by florahart



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Original Universe, court intrigue sorts of things, fantastical setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-03 21:27:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6627148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/florahart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one could have been prepared for portals to open throughout the city and in the sky, but I did the best I could for my prince.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transported

**Author's Note:**

  * For [des_esseintes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/des_esseintes/gifts).



> I picked this up as a pinch hit six days ago, and the story and its world ran away with me somewhat more than anticipated. Part of that was telling the story in the first person, which I hope is not a total dealbreaker for the requestor. If you hate first person, um, sorry about that.
> 
>  
> 
> If you are a person who needs to have a sense of whether the story will end happily, there is a note for you at the end. The note probably constitutes a story spoiler if you are not a person who requires this information, so, your call.

The past several days have been what my old mentor Eirn’haJosha would have called an exercise in understanding the dangers of assumptions.

In my defense, no one could have predicted the rifts, great portals opening apparently at random all over the city to either suck in whatever was just before them or spit out …anything, really. People. Creatures. People who spoke but looked like creatures. Slime. Swamp gases. There is literally nothing I could have done to be more adequately prepared, and also in my defense I responded the best I could have, by running back to the castle, grabbing my armor and the satchel of supplies I always keep at the ready, and stationing myself immediately adjacent to my Prince.

All that was on my mind was defending him; I left the task of working out what the forn was going on to the scientists. 

Who, problematically, all gathered to discuss the topic in the north tower shortly before the north tower was sucked into a particularly poisonous-looking rift. Which I only saw because I happened to be looking in that direction from Prince Eyl’hnDiro’s front window at the instant it happened. It was …forning _fast_ , and terrifyingly large, yellow, and violent.

But there was literally nothing to be done but wait and see, hope for the best, and generally try to be ready for actually anything because Diro is strong and smart, but he suffered an illness as a child which left him perhaps less physically-imposing and skilled than he otherwise would have been. He needs (or, more accurately, has historically needed) a bodyguard that his brother the spare did not past the age of thirteen, and that has been my job since long before his voice changed. So we waited, tense, and tried not to hear the screams from other rooms in the castle. 

Here is a clue, from me to you, regarding readiness for anything: it is impossible, and also exhausting, to maintain a sense of high alert with every sense in every direction while awaiting the unknown which might come into being at any time or never and might be something which is possible or something which is not. I might have done better to choose scenarios and attempt to prepare for them individually, and I certainly would have done better to spend the four tense chimes we waited, glued to one another’s sides, working with the prince on advanced defensive maneuvers just in case he might end up alone (he has a lot. There are always more). But I’ve always been able to defend him before, and there has never been a threat which might include tentacles and/or invisible stingers before. Yeah, both of those were things I saw in the sky and in street-side market stalls on my way back from the market that morning.

But I did not. I reassured him. I reminded him I had promised many years ago to always hold his safety above my own, to defend him. I reminded him that my oath to him superseded my oath to the King. I am sworn to him alone.

And still, when the creature—metallic, somehow both oozing and solid, sharp and fluid and smelling of rotting cucumbers, which is a very oddly specific thing to smell of and I will remember it always—materialized just next to him, not three handslengths away, I froze for an instant. Not because I couldn’t think of a way to defend that (although…really, what? I’ve seen some weird magics in my day, but nothing like that), but because where it materialized _from_ was the same room in which we were standing, mirrored, and behind it were our torn-up and melting bodies. 

So that was disconcerting. I’d assumed based on the other things I saw that all of the portals led to various hells, but that one, at least, led to a place exactly like home, and what did that mean? I didn’t have time to think about it.

All I could do was pull Diro away while I tried to come up with a plan, scrambling when we slipped and realizing too late that what we were slipping _on_ was an icy patch in an alien outdoors.

And that, in falling through a portal we didn’t even see, we had lost everything. My satchel and armor, which was bad, but our clothes, his ring, the cloak his mother commissioned him with the magical repulsion woven into the fibers. The disguise I’ve worn under my clothing for years, his hair decoration, our shoes. Everything. We were naked, on a frozen lawn, under a pair of moons neither of which held the face of Eyl’ak, staring at each other in horror.

Diro was likely the more horrified of the two of us, which based on my own emotional state should be impossible, because the thing is, I have seen most of his body over the years, tending to small wounds and assisting with any of a variety of the functions usually seen to by his chamber servants, but he has never seen mine.

And I’ve been, much as I would usually attempt to position myself more honorably than this and for lack of a better word, lying.

To his credit, he didn’t faint, but he did sit down quickly in the cold wet grass. “Aalyo—no, I suppose it’s Aaly _a_ … what…” He dropped his face into his hands and shook his head. “What the forn, Aalyo.”

I could have taken the easy way out. I could have suggested that the trip through the portal had altered my body in this way. It would have been no stranger than anything else to befall us today.

But I was pretty sure we were about to die anyway, and honesty seemed the best policy. Especially since he had been reduced to obscenity; Diro was no prude, but he usually chose his words rather more politely than that in conversations between only the two of us. “It was the only way to serve you,” I said. “I don’t regret it, but I’m sorry it’s, well, this days is already horrible. I’m sorry it’s making it worse.” I took a step back, sat down as well on the frigid ground where the grass was sufficiently frozen to prick slightly before breaking, and waited for him to look up. 

Finally, he took a deep and shuddering breath. “We’re going to freeze out here. What should I call you?”

“I’ve been Aalyo as long as you’ve known me,” I said. “But you’re the prince. You can call me anything you want. I’ll answer.”

“Fine. Aalyo it is. We’ll sort out what this means later. We need to find shelter.”

I had nearly a decade of experience hopping-to when my prince says so, and I nodded and started looking around, hoping against hope for any reasonable shelter, something small that our own bodies would warm. “Oh!” After a moment I noticed that some distance away—far enough it’s excusable we didn’t see it right away especially as we were concerned with my body that was much nearer—there was a small structure. Maybe a cottage, maybe a stable? I didn’t actually care as long as it was even fractionally warmer than its surroundings.

“What?” He followed my line of sight. “Oh. Well, we should go see, then? Unless you judge it a danger.”

I made a full circle, turning my whole body as I looked in every direction, making _sure_ there was nothing closer because I’d already let us waste too damn much time and I could feel the shivers in my limbs, the numbness creeping up much too fast. We had to get there _quickly_. 

Finally, I nodded again. He stepped toward me and held out a hand. I had no right to the trust in the gesture, but I took it anyway and we started walking. I wished with every step for some kind of magic in this place to draw us along more quickly, to get him to safety so that he would have the option to dismiss me from his sight. No one in the royal family has ever had the kind of magic I’m imagining – his cloak is (was?) exceptional and costly – but it would be only fair for such a thing to exist here.

Evidence suggested it did not, or at least, that I did not know how to call to it if it did, but halfway to the little hut there was a disturbance in the air and something irised open beside us.

It was surely forgivable, after our portal experience of the afternoon, that we shrieked and jumped aside as fiercely as we could, which, given the state of our cold bodies was not very fierce at all, but as we landed in a pile to one side the opening spilled out and then there was a …a person, gender indeterminate and form strangely slender and elongated, driving a cart whose burden beasts were equally strange in their lankiness. This person gestured to the rear of the cart, and offered us the most insubstantial blankets I ever have seen, then pointed to the hut. It (he? I decided that it might be easiest to just assume) burbled something I couldn’t understand a lick of, something fluid and wet-sounding and I had the strange thought that I always think wetness should be more globular than this person could ever be. Ridiculous, of course; a trickle of water is long and thin, but this didn’t sound like a trickle. 

Diro stepped forward. “Are you offering hospitality?” he asked. Then – and this was so odd to me – he bowed and reached for me again, tugging me forward as well. We straightened and took the blankets. Or rather, he took one, and I followed his lead. They helped, some but not enough to offer a permanent solution, and we wrapped them around our shoulders. They were distressingly thin and barely more opaque than clean water. I considered doubling Diro’s and going without myself, but he shot me a glare before I managed to move a muscle in that direction, and so I did not. We climbed into the cart, which was as tall and thin as its driver and so this was no insignificant effort but what other choice was there, and huddled together as it bumped and jolted across the grass.

It took but a moment to realize we were not making for the hut we’d previously observed, and I made a sound and pointed, but our host continued to the… south? I could not tell whether direction here was as at home, and the pair of moons was no help although I thought they had risen further and so that was what I decided to call it, if for no other reason than to feel a moment of familiarity to ground myself in. I need it.

“He’ll take us where he will,” Diro said. He paused, then sighed and opened his blanket—not that I could see it! But the gesture was clear. He pulled me into his lap as though it were perfectly appropriate for our naked bodies to cuddle together, and I couldn’t feel the thin cloth between us at all, only the solidity of his chest and the slight reduction of chill where we touched.

I sat, tense and awkward in his lap, as he wrapped the blanket closed again, and still, I felt useless, absurd, awkward, dishonest. 

“Aal,” he said, “Freezing will only forn things up worse, and you’ll probably need your energy at some point to defend me.”

“Will you still allow it?”

He pressed his lips together. “Here’s the thing. You’ve defended me many times, and you have skills I do not. I wonder, rather, whether the King placed you with me in order to underscore his position that I am too weak to rule—“

“I’m as certain as I can be he’s never known, mostly because he’d probably have tried to blackmail me in ways I’d definitely have noticed, but either way, no, that’s forning ridiculous.”

“His opinion is hardly news,” Diro said. “But it also doesn’t matter. He’s probably dead, if the devastation didn’t end when we left. I’m probably now the proper king of a land that’s melted to slag, and you may be my only subject. Letting you defend me probably only delays the inevitable death of the nation, but I do know you _can_. I’m weak, not stupid.”

I couldn’t help it. Defense of him wasn’t – isn’t – only a physical game, to me. “You’re not weak, either,” I said. “I’ve trained you myself. And taken the bruises for it.”

“I bruised you?”

“Don’t get delicate now.” I also couldn’t help that it came out a little sharp. I was at loose ends and I’d worked hard to be the bodyguard he needed. And I felt more than a little defensive with my breasts curled against his breastbone, my seat wedged into the hollow of his crossed bare legs where I was ignoring the shapes of his genitals, pulled up tight against his body in the cold but still apparent against my body.

“Ah, but that’s the problem, isn’t it? That I’m delicate and require the protection of a woman?”

I snorted loudly at that. “You’re not delicate. _You_ bruised _me_ , remember?”

“It goes both ways.”

“My job, my lord.”

“Stop.” He pulled the edges of the blanket closer and shook his head. “Let’s save this for later. But yes, I would let you defend me. I’ve always known I needed you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I never meant for you to know.”

“Yes, I believe that was clear.” He pulled my head to rest against his shoulder, which, his statements as to his own weakness aside was well-developed and firm. Actually, all of him is; that he’d needed me was true, but it was also true that probably he could have taken on nearly any threat he faced in the last five years. He’s not tall, but he’s powerful.

We remained that way for a long while, trying not to fall into a sleep from which I feared we’d never wake, until the being driving the cart stopped before a cylindrical structure which reminded me of nothing so much as the tower of Rap’haNzela: tall, old, stone, with a single window high above. Of course, based on the elongated appearance of our driver and his team, perhaps it was an average two-story bungalow on this world.

It disturbed me, how easily I’d become accustomed to the notion that there could be many worlds and not just the one. Of course, the other option cast serious doubts upon my sanity, so I supposed this was the better of bad choices. In any case, here we were. It was clear our driver hoped for us to exit the cart and enter the structure from his gestures and continuing stream of rippling sounds. I wasn’t sure why he continued speaking, honestly; he couldn’t have understood our conversation behind him any better than we’d understood him.

But, since our ride was done, we clambered out, shivering, and stood at the base of the tower while the cart and its driver vanished into another…dimension? I wasn’t sure that was what it was, but I also didn’t have a better description.

Things about which it would have been a good idea to ask (had we the language) prior to his departure: how to get into the tower anyway. A circuit of it revealed no door, and the window was by my estimation at a height of three stories. We shook in our blankets and winced as our feet were forced to work through their frozen state after the inactivity in the cart, and looked at each other again.

It was surprisingly easy to at least partially forget about the fact that we could see each other’s bodies so clearly while we tried to solve the problem, brains growing sluggish in the chill, but I suppose the urgency of the situation gave us at least that bit of focus, so that was something.

“We could climb,” he finally said.

“Do you honestly think you can? I don’t think _I_ can.”

“No, _I_ can’t, but Aalyo, I’ve seen you climb higher structures.”

“Yes, but with shoes and equipment.”

“Once you’re in perhaps the solution will be clear.”

“Even if I wanted to abandon you, I’d be failing at my job.”

“Take the blankets. Once you’re in, perhaps you can drop them to me.”

“No. If I’m to have shelter, you’ll have the blankets,” I said, realizing as the words came out my mouth that I was in fact agreeing to this approach. Forn.

“I’ll catch you if you fall,” he said. “One benefit of you not wearing armor is that you won’t crush me.”

I considered making a rude gesture, but where that bit of casual familiarity had been unusual but possible before, it seemed wrong now that he was aware of the body I wore under the armor, so I didn’t. I gritted my teeth, took off the blanket, and handed it over, then turned before I could think better of it, and started to climb.

When I looked over my shoulder he was looking up, watching me intently with both blankets wrapped around his shoulders, and I immediately resolved not to look again; it was bad enough being aware of the view he’d have from there, but seeing it was worse even if he was only preparing to break my fall. I focused carefully on placing my toes on the tops of the most-protruding stones, gripping tight with my fingers, and progressing toward the window as quickly as possible.

And – to my shock, in fact – it worked. I made it to the window and crawled over the ledge to find a room rather exactly like I’d have imagined Rap’haNzela would have inhabited. And, mercy of mercies, a small fireplace. It wasn’t, as far as I could tell, any warmer in here than outside, so I chose to start a fire before figuring out how to haul Diro up here after me. I shouted down to let him know I wasn’t dead and he wasn’t abandoned, and then set to work.

Initially I was distressed to find that there was no true fuel in the room – half a dozen books, which, if we were going to be stuck here we might find we wanted to keep, and the bed and bedding which we were certainly going to need for warmth as well, but no supply of wood. However, on my second search of the room my toes caught on a bump in the rug and I tripped, sprawling hard. I skinned my left hand rather badly and was sure my knees would show dark bruises in the morning, but when I investigated the source of the fall, I found a concealed handle to a trap door, which led down first a short ladder and then stone steps to a cellar containing both food stores (unexpected and probably welcome, although a part of me wondered whether we would even be able to eat local products) and a woodpile of sorts. 

I took the rug down with me to use as a bag and hauled wood up the steps slowly, tossing it over my head and through the trap door before making a return trip to grab what looked like some tubers. There were bundles that might be herbs, but without information about whether they were intended for seasoning or medicine (for beings unlike ourselves, ugh), I was unwilling to even start to experiment. Potatoes would have to do. I took another rugload of wood to the top of the steps and left it there, carrying just a few potatoes up the ladder.

Diro was coming over the ledge when I stuck my head up through the door. “You were supposed to wait,” I said. “Who was going to catch you?”

“No one,” he said, “but…” He gestured over his shoulder. “I thought probably getting eaten by a dragon wasn’t what you had in mind.”

“A… dragon.” I helped him in and looked down, and all right, it wasn’t the kind of dragon I had ever imagined; but there was a scaly beast, gray and showing the characteristic elongation of this world’s creatures, pacing beneath the window. I say _dragon_ , but it wasn’t winged (fortunately!); it was the fire-breathing that sold the concept. “Forn.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said,” he held up a blackened and ragged corner of one of the blankets, now tied around him. “He came around the side of the building and tried to cook me – I learned the blankets are flammable, by the way. Good thing he’s really stupid so I had time to get started up. Scorching to my… anyway, I was very motivated to get out of range.”

I involuntarily imagined what might be scorched if a dragon spit flames at the rear of a man climbing naked away from it and winced. “Did it burn you?”

“I don’t know if I’d know,” he said. “I’m mostly numb.”

My impulse was to examine him all over, but the wiser choice was to build the damn fire.

I looked at the bedding, which thankfully looked like it might hold in body heat, if I ever managed to get warm again in the first place, and back at the thin blanket. “How flammable, do you think? Also, why didn’t you yell?”

“You were busy, and all you could have done was jump down and then have to climb again.” He shrugged. “Score one for defending myself, I suppose?” He unknotted the blankets and tore one in half, handing it over. “If there’s anything to spark it…”

I held up the device I’d found near the grate, a contraption involving a spring, a flint, and a forearm-length lever. 

“Good. And there’s wood!”

I pointed at the door I’d just come through. “It’s down there. Not an indefinite supply, but some.” I balled up the blanket and set it in the grate, piled on some smaller and larger wood pieces, and awkwardly, with two hands because I couldn’t seem to coordinate my fingers any more, struck a spark.

Thankfully, the blanket caught immediately, and then the kindling roared up right after.

Diro and I looked at each other, hesitated only slightly, and piled into the bed, huddling together and whimpering as our toes and fingers lit up in pain with blood coming back to them. 

Eventually, I got up, and believe me, it wasn’t fun, to add more fuel to our little fire and spent several minutes trying to work out whether there was any way for me, with the tools available, to cover the open window, but I didn’t come up with anything immediately and eventually decided to leave it for the morning. Both moons were down by this time, and it was dark in the room, the air outside utterly still.

Crawling back into the bed with Diro was both awkward all over again and unbelievably welcome; he has by this time warm and I was chilled again and shivering. “My turn next time,” he said against my ear as I pressed back into him. “You wake me if I don’t wake on my own.”

I wasn’t about to do any such thing; Diro is the prince. But, he was firm about it, and threw a leg over me and held me in close against him. A couple of hours later, I woke again to find him up, puttering with the fire without me. He was bad at it, because I and his other staff have always done this work, but he was doing all right and I had to admit I was pleased not to get up. The sky was lightening outside finally, and I hoped for a sunny day, enough hours long in what I assumed was winter to give us time to figure out how to proceed.

When he came back to bed I’d switched our positions, scooting back and pulling him against me, throwing over a leg as he’d done to me. He stiffened. “Is that what I did?”

“What? Is this – I apologize.” I started to draw my leg back, but he reached and snagged behind the knee, stroking with his thumb as he held me in place. 

“I’m fine,” he said, “but it occurs to me you might have felt trapped.”

I blinked and let my calf fall over his thigh again. “I don’t understand. One, I could probably have gotten out—“

“Yes, but Aalyo, we’ve shared heat before, but I’m the prince, and you’ve never thought it was likely I’d want more than that.”

Something about his phrasing puzzled me, but I shook my head. “Diro, I still could have defended myself if I thought you were asking for something I didn’t want to allow.”

“Could, yes. Would?” His thumb was still caressing the outside of my knee, and I wondered if this was a roundabout way of asking how much resistance he would face. It wasn’t a question I’d ever allowed myself to consider, as I’d planned to maintain my disguise until retirement, but then, I also didn’t think that was the point; if Diro were the sort of man who took advantage of women in the first place, I’d have beaten that out of him in training. 

“What are you asking?” I finally asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “I merely wanted to know whether you would, now that we are away from my father and my family, remove yourself from a situation against my wishes.”

I blew out a breath. “I don’t think that’s what you’re asking at all,” I said. “I think you’re asking whether I think you’re inclined to rape me just because I’m available.”

“You’re not availa— that is. You’re. I wasn’t.” He sounded hilariously flustered, and confused, and as though some aspect of the conversation I wasn’t seeing was infringing on his ability to get a sentence out without a problem.”

“Well, no,” I said. “I am available, in the sense that I am physically present and also naked in bed with you.”

He shuddered and his hand stilled.

“What was that?”

“What?”

“You. You said you were fine, close to me as you are, but when I said naked – there it is again.”

He stilled his thumb and muttered, “Well, I _wouldn’t_ , but that doesn’t mean I’m unaffected.” He cleared his throat. “I’m warm. Ish. Um, if you don’t want to stay all pressed together.”

I took the hint and backed off, although honestly I would have in the first place, had he not caught my leg in his hand. And if he was so affected, why in the world(s) was he petting my leg? That couldn’t possibly help. It wasn’t helping _me_ not to want _him_ , certainly. In any case, I wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but I was still very tired, and it still wasn’t entirely light outside so I just took him at his unnecessary word that I was safe with him, and closed my eyes again.

When I next woke, it was bright outside, but still cold, and Diro was prodding at the fire again. “Hey, my turn.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “I’m not sure we should stick entirely to turns.”

“I see.”

“What’s that mean?”

“What?”

“I see.” He imitated my tone. “Is there something wrong with choosing to pitch in?”

“No, but I think if we’re choosing a system in which you’re in charge, then I remain your servant and the job is mine. If we’re choosing something that could involve taking turns, then we are a team, and decisions should be shared.” I had no idea why I was annoyed about his choices, but I was.

He stood and turned around. “Were you going to mention the potatoes?”

“Yes, but first I was going to taste one and make sure I didn’t die foaming at the mouth.” That was the honest truth; just because the food looked like an ordinary tuber didn’t mean it wouldn’t poison us.

“Well, that was my plan as well,” he said, “so I just ate one bite. We’ll see how I do.”

I sat up, ignoring the cold and the fact that this dropped the blankets off me. “You what!”

“You were going to!”

“You’re the prince!”

“If we’re deciding things together we’re a team.”

“So?”

“So teams only work if everyone is responsible to the group. You taught me that.”

Which was true; I had, although as it was in the second year of my service with him and he was, at the time, thirteen, scrawny, and entirely filled with the sort of adolescent opinions that usually render the young terrible listeners. I gaped for a minute, then said, “Well forn.”

He nodded. “About that.” He looked down. “I didn’t explain myself well earlier.”

“What’s to explain? We’re naked and alone, I’m a girl, this is news, and by the way we’re also freezing and starving. Fornication is probably not the first order of business anyway.”

“Not sure I agree with your logic on that,” he said with a wry grin. “If we both wanted that, and it was the only bright spot…”

I had to agree that was a decent point. “Still, you’ve never been the sort to just wet your wick in just any available hole.”

“I don’t know why it surprises me when you’re crude now.”

“Breasts?”

“Apparently.” He looked away again. “But if we’re going to freeze and/or starve, I think I should tell you a thing.”

“You’ve been sneaking out to brothels for years?”

“Uh, no.”

“Uh, _yes_ ; I’m nobody’s fool, Diro. You’ve snuck out several times.”

“That, yes. However, I was merely meeting expectations.”

“Meeting expectations.”

“Amongst the men, there is an expectation. When I go there, I usually pass the evening with the same woman. While I’m there, haSheya and I play ravens and crows. Or discuss politics.”

I wasn’t sure why he was telling me this, and I said so.

“Because I was supposed to want this sort of thing—“

“And you don’t?”

“Not with any of the women of my acquaintance.”

“ Diro, you know as King you’ll have to—“

Diro put up a hand. “Yes, I do know that, but no, that’s not the problem. Or, I didn’t think it was exactly the problem. The problem was, I was in love with someone unattainable, mostly because I had no reason to believe he would be interested. Or, as it turns out, she.”

I worked through his logic for a second, then scrunched up my eyebrows. “You… wanted me as a man, but never asked? And now that I’m—“

“Now I both want physically and am interested, not-physically. But, you never acted like you wanted into my bed before, so…”

“Because I was _playing a man._ Diro, I don’t know if you know, but a man approaching his prince for forning can really only do that if said prince asks first. It’s the sort of thing that can get one beheaded, after all.”

“Oh. All right, I can see how that might be, although in case it should ever arise, there will never be a time in my kingdom where I allow that. But if you had not been?”

“Would I have thrown myself at you if you’d known I was a woman? No, as I would not have _been in service with you_ in that case, so there would have been no such opportunity. I’m a bodyguard, Diro, not a scullery maid. I wanted to work at the highest level, and so I had to change who I was.”

“How did you, by the way?”

“How did I what?”

“Hide, you know, those.” He gestured at my chest, which, unbound and without the helpful influence of mail covering my whole torso was not exactly un-obvious.

“I bound my breasts and padded my crotch. Also useful for the other obvious problem, the padding.”

He frowned, then realized what I was talking about. “You – but Father always said that women, that there were whole days and weeks…”

“Yes, well, I’m fortunate not to suffer much, and I was motivated.”

“I wish you hadn’t been.”

“Oh?”

“No, not. I’m glad you’ve been with me, and I’m glad you’re who is with me now, but, not to belabor the point, I wanted you to my great confusion when I thought you were a man because I felt no pull toward any other men and certainly some toward women, enough so that I’ve wrestled with how to ever find a wife who would satisfy me and tolerate you.”

“And you now expect…”

“Nothing at all. I’m king of nothing, here. I’m no one.”

“But what do you _want_?”

“You, to whatever extent you choose.” He held up his hands. “Your decision, always. I just want you to know why, if we’re stuck here long, I’m likely to wake up, well. Do you know?”

I chuckled. “I’ve been sleeping in the hall with other men for a long time, Diro.”

“Ah. So.”

“How long ago did you eat that potato?”

He frowned. “Probably a half-chime.”

“Did you cook it first?”

He nodded.

I pointed at the pile of them. “Then set these to roast for a little while and come back to bed. I think… we might find ourselves hungry, an hour or so from now.”

He followed my directions regarding the roasting of potatoes, then turned around. “Wait, so—“

“So get in the bed, Diro.” I held up the blanket and waited. “You’ve said you want. I want. We’re the only two people like us in the world. We both want to and might as well.”

He was chilly when he slid in beside me, chilly and awkward, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling as I lay beside him. 

“In case it wasn’t clear, I’m offering,” I said, a minute later.

“I know,” he said. He turned to face me. “But now I have a different problem. It’s embarrassing.”

“Di, you’ve just told me you thought you were interested in me as a man. How much worse can it be?”

“Worse, no. But now what I really want is to please you, and what I realize is that some practice might have been a more useful approach than the one I took.”

For the first time in my life I wished I had not always kept my nails clipped so close in support of the fiction I’d been running, because I was sure that his response would have been infinitely more satisfying when I scraped them up his thigh if it had been more than just the slight roughness it was. As it was, he jumped and the skin of his arm, against my chest now, thickened to gooseflesh. “I think we can figure it out,” I said. “For example, you seem to like this quite a lot.”

“Yes,” he said. “But it doesn’t follow I know what to do with you.”

“Will you trust me to tell you? Because if that’s all we have, it’s also all we need.” I ignored that I was only slightly less inexperienced as he seemed to be indicating he was, mostly because I thought we were probably even. I was sure he knew how to please his own body, and sleeping in among the men I had often taken advantage of the expectation that we ignored each other’s movements under the blankets, so I had a pretty good idea for myself.

And I had, just before entering into service as his bodyguard, once spent a highly satisfying few days with a bard who had stopped at Josha’s camp to trade stories and supplies. But that was a long time ago, and I was very young. I thought it most likely my body had different needs at twenty-seven than it had as a teenager. It didn’t mean I knew exactly how to proceed with my prince, whose needs would also be probably unlike those of the bard.

I gathered my courage, although all this frank discussion had enough heat pooled low in my belly that I didn’t need to gather it much, and rolled to straddle him. He swallowed and caught me, his hands rough on my hips. “I do trust you,” he said, bending his thumbs so the edge of a nail dug into the skin of my belly. He scraped gently. “This?”

I nodded. “On my skin, yes that.”

“But not…” He slid his hands down and together, wrapping his hands around the very tops of my thighs, pushing his thumbs down between where I already was brushing against his hardening penis. I groaned – entirely involuntarily, but then nothing about the past day had been planned – and slid my hands up his chest, grasping and gripping, kneading at his chest.

I failed, entirely, at offering verbal instructions shortly after that, but it didn’t much matter. His thumbs found that I was wet and he couldn’t have missed that I was eager, but after just a couple of strokes of his fingers he rolled us over and pinned me down, hands on my hipbones as he kissed his way down my body. Mostly I just writhed and gasped, but from his response, I imagine he found this instructive enough.

I expected him to ignore the muscularity of my shoulders, the way I was nowhere soft or feminine because every day I have trained hard, building the kind of solidity and frankly bulk to impose and enforce. I expected him to just get to the heart of the matter, to thrust into me (which by then I wanted! Urgently!), but he did not. I expected him to work, as I have understood from my fellows is common, entirely toward his own gratification. No. He lingered, nuzzling between my breasts but also nibbling at the joints of muscles I’d developed in years of pounding at targets and sparring with anything I might need to be competent with in a fight. He spend long minutes on the scar down the outside of my left shoulder, brought there by his own hand when he was clumsy at sixteen, and on the callouses at my elbows, my knuckles, the place my skin is rough on one side of my neck because the strap of that satchel rubs. He ran his hands up and down my thighs, finding every plane and dip and looking up sharply when I let out a hiss because of the forgotten bruises on my knees. He stopped then, examining the bruises and looking at me with his eyebrows arched – are there others? I showed him my scraped palm and let him kiss that, too, and then, _finally_ , he came back to what I’d expected all along. 

And stopped again. “You’re sure?”

I think my expression must have been as disgruntled as my body was about how we were not moving fast enough now that we’d begun; he laughed immediately and arranged himself between my legs, pushing forward and making a noise I thought I’d like to hear again please. 

I didn’t say so out loud, but he obliged me anyway, thrusting a handful more of times, and then he gasped and froze, and I felt the pulse of his body inside mine, and forn. That was much less than I’d wanted.

He dropped his head to my shoulder and mumbled something, then shook his head and bit my ear. 

“What?”

“What nothing. If you were scoring that, no, I know, you weren’t, but that would get a two on your scale of eight. It’s different, with, anyway, wait.” He lifted onto his elbows and looked down at me. “I’m assuming you are not satisfied at all.”

I felt competing urges at that. I wanted to demand satisfaction for my body and wished for him to want more as well, and I also wanted to soothe my prince, tell him he’d done a good job, stroke his ego a little. Finally, I pursed my lips. “I’d rather we’d had a little more time.”

“Oh, we probably have literally all the time in the world.”

“You know what I meant.” 

“So then, you think we should continue.” He pushed his hips forward, and although he was softening inside me, my body came up with a responding pulse which widened his eyes. “What is that?” I did it again, and he gasped. “I didn’t think I could... well, maybe...” He pushed forward again experimentally, and my body cheered as we rocked together. He didn’t reach another climax, but when I did he stared intently at me as the spasms gripped him, and grinned ridiculously, proud of himself and blushing. When he rolled off me we didn’t consider an option other than curling together for a quick nap before further consideration of the topic.

The potatoes, which tasted more like a spicy sort of beet, perhaps, but seemed to do us no harm and did supply enough energy for continuing to enthusiastically explore each other’s bodies all afternoon, turned out not to be the only thing in the root cellar although I had no idea how I’d missed some of it on my first look. I supposed I had been at the edge of exhaustion and reason both. There were also something I supposed might have been mostly like carrots, although their bright blue color that edged toward green on roasting was disconcerting. There was a tough, salty preserved meat that reminded us of the great antlered ruminants to the north of the kingdom, and a barrel each of a sprouted bulb and mealy sweet apples. There was something that reminded me of wide sweet wheat and an additional barrel with ordinary water. Eventually we found stonefruits as well, dried and hanging in woven bags from the ceiling. 

It wasn’t a lot of variety, but by the end of the third day we’d concluded we could probably survive for at least some weeks, giving us time to try to establish contact with the locals or, perhaps, try to understand what had brought us here and whether we’d a home left to return to. I wished we did, if only because I knew that in this place, we would eventually die, probably sooner and colder than at home. 

We’d also used every surface in our temporary home to find innovative ways to please each other (Diro had always been a quick study, and it turned out he had a particular talent with his tongue that I’d never have thought possible), and as we lay on the floor before the fire, sweaty and exhausted, Diro running his fingers through my hair and wondering aloud if I would grow it now (I thought not; long hair is troublesome), we heard below the window the burbling sounds of our cart driver. We peered over the sill.

His sounds were still very difficult to parse because his vowels were strangely shaped and he lacked consonants we expected, but it quickly became apparent that he was asking for us by name, and that he held a message for us.

It was also fairly clear he didn’t _understand_ the message, that he was only repeating it and waiting for our response.

_Eyl’hnDiro and Irs’hoAalyo, return home, portals are stabilized, many including our father are lost, scryers report you live, your assistance is vital and your kingdom awaits, Eyl’hnDalo_

Dalo is Diro’s brother, the spare, younger by a bit over a year and taller, blonder, more popular with nearly everyone. He’s never been the particularly compassionate type, and so this message, conveying the death of their father as an ordinary part of the day, was entirely typical of him. However, as we had spent the past three days and more assuming the loss of _everything_ we knew, learning that even a single member of the royal family survived was a joyful moment.

We compared notes, as to the content of the message and its meaning, then thought about what to do. We had no idea how Dalo might have tracked down where we had ended up, unless portals reappeared in the same space recurrently (possible?) but even then, how had the message been accomplished? We considered, hurriedly because the driver was waiting, and then with a shrug took the blankets from the bed for our journey back out to the field in which we’d landed. I checked before we left that we still had kindling and the means to rebuild the fire; if we returned I suspected it would be after nightfall again, and it would have returned from chilly to frigid.

The cart ride seemed shorter, possibly because we were being returned to the point from which we came and not the point from which we were picked up, but it still took time, time enough for my body to notice how much unaccustomed activity it had had over the past two days. I was used to whacking on things with sticks and leaping, running, climbing. I was _not_ used to spending all day in bed with a lover coming up with new, and I will admit sometimes athletic, ways to wring climaxes from me. When I shifted against him and winced, Diro gave me a look that said he was feeling something of the same. I supposed if one were to suggest a positive shared experience after the apocalypse, this was a likely top choice.

As we approached our original landing site, it was easy to see the trail we’d walked two nights before, the grass undisturbed since, and easier yet to see how we’d landed; this area was clearly even more remote than we’d realized. I wasn’t able to find the hut again in the daylight, which seemed strange to me, and I asked Diro to look for it as well. Neither of us could see it, and when we asked our driver he either did not understand despite our gestures and mimery. Eventually we gave up, and after some time the driver parked to let us out. He turned his team and vanished into another impossible portal, and left us to our thoughts. I hoped, if we were still standing here in some hours, he returned; I thought I knew which way would take us back to our tower but I certainly couldn’t see it from here and didn’t want to wander in order to find it. 

The first moon, the larger of the two and the one most interesting on its face to examine, started to edge up over the horizon, but we’d seen it three night running now, and we knew it was a long while yet before dark. Just then, as I was wondering what to expect when Dalo reached us, a terrible thought struck me. “Do you think Dalo knew how to control them all along?”

“Control what?”

“The portals. Do you think there’s a chance this was all his design, perhaps less in his control than he’d have wanted but...”

Diro thought about that for longer than was comfortable, then shook his head. “Perhaps. In which case, this was probably a grab for power. In which case, he expected me to die. Probably a fair expectation, if the second portal to here hadn’t opened. In which case...”

“In which case we probably want to be not right in front of the thing when it opens,” I said. “You should step to the side, Your Majesty.”

“What? Aalyo, I think we’re a bit past formality.”

“If we’re going back...”

“Forn that. If we’re going back, you--”

“Cannot remain in your service in this body.”

“Can, but let’s solve that problem when we come to it. For now, look at the area. Where should we be?”

I chose a site to one side of where the portal must have opened, and paused, then picked up a rock. My choices for weaponry were limited, but not non-existent. Ten minutes later, a thin blue-white line formed in the air and a light flared, and then, at a very shallow angle, we could see into Diro’s chambers at home. Dalo stood, foreshortened by the view, in the circle, looking out onto the frosted landscape. He scowled, and we moved just into view. 

“There you are,” he said. “I wondered if the message had got to you at all.”

“It did,” Diro said. “Have you been here before, or was this one too cold?”

The look on Dalo’s face in that moments said far more than he could have wanted it to, and quickly he contained his expression, rearranging his features to innocence. But he’d given himself away now, and Diro stepped back out of view, dragging me with him. Our gamble was that even if Dalo controlled the portals, he might not be able to move them at will. Still, he spoke to us through the circle. “You’ll have to come back eventually,” he said, “and I know the schedule of this potential.”

It was definitely a threat. I wondered for an instant whether Diro realized it, but the look on his face said he did, and then, without warning, the circle shrank and closed.

Our driver returned and without a word we climbed back into the cart and went back to the tower. We heated up our potatoes and stirred apple slices in a little water over the fire until they were mush, sweetened with the honey we’d been happy to find that morning. Neither of us felt like doing anything else, although Diro, who based on my long observation of the men of my acquaintance is surprisingly sweet, massaged by sore sitting muscles and spent a long time just stroking my back as the fire flickered before curling around me and sleeping soundly.

“Do you think,” he asked in the morning, “that if we wished it, we could open the portal somewhere else?”

I didn’t know what to make of the question, particularly not long after dawn, and gestured for him to elaborate.

“I’ve been thinking about the food, about this shelter, about all of it. And... I’ve been thinking about how we came to be here.”

“Your brother pushed us, is how,” I said. “What are you getting at?”

“I think besides the actual push, though, we might be controlling our own environment. Don’t you?”

“Controlling it how?”

“You found wood and food, when we most needed it. We had a cart, to transport us even though we’ve never seen the first sign of the man at any other time. The food supply keeps getting better. I just feel like maybe this place listens to our wishes.”

“We could probably test it,” I said. “What do you want for breakfast?”

He groaned. “Tea,” he said, “now that we’ve honey. And eggs. And a pan for breaking them in, which I haven’t yet seen here.”

“Well, I still don’t see one now,” I said, looking about the room. “But, we can look in the cellar again.” It was true that nearly every time we’d been below, we’d found something new, something we wanted or needed. And I wanted his idea to be true, so perhaps we were both wishing for it.

When we opened the trap door a tall thin bird flapped up out of the cellar and out the window, leaving us staring at one another, and when we made our way down the ladder, we found a nest, hiding in the eaves almost directly under the bed we’d spent so much time in. Six yellow-shelled eggs were in the nest, and by the time we found the frying pan, neither of us was surprised. I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to either of us to wish for clothes.

Of course, being unclothed had ended rather well, but I’d never have expected it to. And it was going to complicate our lives if in fact we did ever make our way home. Maybe we didn’t need to? Maybe we could wish away the climate, grow tomatoes and pears, find a blue-water beach with bright sand and colorful fishes – maybe a mermaid!

But no, there must be limits on the extent to which this environment could shape to suit us, and in any case we couldn’t –ethically! – wish others of our acquaintance here, so if we wanted any kind of society, we had to go home.

An hour after breakfast, flushed pink with exertion as Diro experimented with using the wall as a surface to play against, I wasn’t so sure we needed much society, but then, in my heart, I did. I was sworn to Diro regardless, and I had no doubt he was devoted to me, but he was accustomed to people, and he _liked_ people. We were going to have to go home, now that we knew maybe we could.

I asked, while we were cleaning up the room, preparing to leave it as we found it if we could, why he supposed we’d turned up naked, and he’d blushed fiercely, looking away from me and muttering that probably that was _his_ fault. He didn’t want to explain himself, exactly, but I imagined that for all we’d found this tower when I wished for a place for him to be entirely secure, for all we’d gotten exactly what we needed even when we didn’t wish on purpose, it probably was nothing to be embarrassed _about_ , so I left it. Besides, it was possible that it was simply an effect of the portal transition. There was no way to know without an additional experiment, so it didn’t matter. 

The dragon, I didn’t know what to think about because it had been back twice, prowling for an hour or so, and then gone on; it seemed to be nothing to do with us. Perhaps Diro’s wish for it had only been its stupidity, in which case I wished for it to regain its senses after we’d gone; there was no reason to hurt its life when we weren’t here to benefit.

After supper, we sat on the bed and considered what we wanted to do. A portal to a different place? To a different room? At a different time? How could we best avoid the ambush Dalo surely had set? The same scryers who had told him that we lived would probably be able to find us for him regardless, so if his goal with all of this was to rule – Diro broke in here to point out that his brother had no sense of scale and probably could have come up with a good assassination plot much more cheaply, leading us to wonder what, actually, the cost had been. There must have been one. Ultimately, we decided it wasn’t important, just interesting, and went back to thinking through our plan.

We decided, as the fire died down, to hedge our bets, changing the time and the the place, opening our portal just away from the foot of the tower and hoping it would take us to the kitchens instead of the bedchamber. Our clothes were a separate problem, but morning here should be late night at home, if our grasp of the timelines was accurate and the days were of similar duration, and we hoped to be able to find our way out before there was any trouble. We agreed that trouble (Dalo) would probably find us, soon enough, and so once our plan was made I pushed Diro down onto his back and teased him until I couldn’t stand it any more, holding the tip of him just inside me, my weight on my hands on his chest, the tops of my feet pulled up onto his thighs. It wasn’t that we didn’t have plenty of memories from this place; it was that I was greedy and wanted one more.

In the morning, we draped the blankets out to air over a conveniently-found rope we tied from one wall to the other, then went down the now-sturdier toe-holds of the wall (I realized, rather too late, that we might have just wished ourselves a door) and walked, hand in hand and once again naked, a distance from the tower, bringing only a small parcel of cooked beet-potatoes and boiled eggs, just in case it took a long time for the portal to form. We were chilly, but no longer freezing, and as we stood there and closed our eyes, wishing our portal awake, our cart-driver pulled up, two identical others with him on the narrow seat. Perhaps they had each driven us once? It was impossible to say. We told them goodbye and listened to an impassioned speech we could not understand, then stepped into the kitchens of home.

************************

And this is where my last assumption came back to surprise me. I’d thought I was aware of the many I had made, but as we crept from the kitchens to the servants’ quarters where we meant to liberate at the least a cloak and a hood for me, Diro stopped and made for the library instead. It wasn’t the plan, but I meant to follow him wherever he meant to go, so I went with him, now clad in only a greasy apron and a rather damp and rancid-smelling towel. 

Half of the library was gone, of course; the portals had done a great deal of damage where fire or floods had swept through. Still, Diro knew exactly what he was looking for, and found it easily. “What are you doing?” I asked.

He put up a finger and flipped through the pages, then rummaged in a desk drawer for a moment. He came up with a blade, designed to slice open seals and peel away wax. “Abdicating,” he said, holding the edge over his palm, poised to slice.

“What. No.” I grabbed for his wrist. “No.”

He glanced up at me. “He showed his hand, Aalyo. He’ll never stop trying to kill me, and you for his trouble.”

“If you abdicate, he’ll be king.”

“That’s kind of the point. It’s what he wants.”

“And it’s what the people don’t deserve,” I said. “I have served you, but you serve the people.”

He stared at me, hurt. “ _Have_ served? But--”

“But nothing. If you do this, I won’t run with you.” I pull the book out of his hands, look at the page he’s holding open to. It’s marked with layers upon layers of rust-colored stains from, evidently, a long line of abdicating rulers. “I can vanish – he won’t be looking for a woman and I’m sure he won’t have realized through the blankets – but I can’t let you leave your people. Not for me, and not for him.”

Diro opened his mouth to object, then closed it again, and closed the book in my hands. “Then I stay.” He put the book back on the shelf. “Now what?”

I shrugged and put back his book, then moved over a section and pulled another one from the shelf. “Study up on poisons?” He pulled back, but I shook my head. “If you can’t, I will, sire. There’s no good outcome in which he lives.” 

“I doubt he would trust anything I might feed him.”

“Probably not,” I said. “But he might take something from the body of a woman sent in to warm his bed...” I held up the other thing I’d brought with me from our world: a clump of herbs that had fallen from the ceiling on my last trip downstairs, just as I wondered how to eliminate Dalo. They smelled nice, but made my nose itch, and in the center I’d found Heartsputter, rare in our kingdom and only found early in the spring, still fresh in my fingers in the cellar.

“Who... no. You can’t. It’s too dangerous,” he said.

“So is doing nothing,” I replied. “Perhaps I’ll go have a bath now and then see what I can do.”

He caught at my fingers, not firmly enough to stop me which I assume was because he knows better than to try, then let me go.

When I looked back, he was considering the first book again. Sometimes I forgot how young he was, even for a king.

*

The easy ending here is that my plan worked. That Dalo took me to his bed and took in enough ground Heartsputter off my skin to tragically, suddenly die in the morning. That isn’t what happened.

Dalo’s heart sputtered and stammered for longer than should have been possible, but his steward found him at just the wrong moment.

He survived, and worse, while he was pounding into my body (ungently, unlike his brother, taking everything for himself) he had recognized me. He is damaged and he is angry, and he knows what happened to him so when he named his assailant, he was ruthless. I have no secrets any more.

The effort on his life is treason, clearly, and after everything else that happened, no one is in a forgiving mood no matter what kind of person Dalo was or is. He won’t recover the ability to walk or speak clearly, and won’t ever make another challenge for the throne, so in that regard, I’ve done what I needed to do. I protected my prince (my king) and saved my country. But the cost. The cost was high, for me and for Eyl’hisnDiro, who is the last of his line and will need to quickly get himself an heir.

I’ve offered my counsel, privately, from my cell, as to whom he might marry.

He’s offered to commute my sentence in exchange for my promise to return to our world and remain there until such time as the people forget (I am certain that one of the people who will never forget is Diro himself, and I can’t imagine his eventual wife would ever welcome me back regardless).

I have until sunrise to decide.

**Author's Note:**

> If you are a person who needs a happy ending, you'll want to cease your reading at "kitchens" where there is a line of  
> ************************ in the text. I feel like that spot makes an endpoint we can all live with, but it's not the end that this story asked me to write.


End file.
